Guitar Strings

(Wait… vehicles? I thought you said “Guitar Strings.” Yeah, I did. Just wait.)

I drive my vehicles long — big road trips — and trade ’em quickly, usually before the tires need to be changed. In fact, I can only think of two sets of tires I’ve bought in the last ten years or so. One of those is a set on my Jeep, which I’m beginning to think will be buried with me. I just have no itch to trade that one off.

What’s that gotta do with guitar strings? Great question!

Since I started learning the guitar about ten months ago, I’ve left a swath of guitars in my wake. Currently, I have two guitars — my Carvin Cobalt C350 and my Takamine EF740SGN… and that one’s for sale right now. 🙂 I’ve tended to trade my guitars like I’ve traded my vehicles … before they needed maintenance.

Yesterday was the first time I’d changed the strings on a guitar, and my victim was my Cobalt, which I play so very frequently. You see, I’d come into a set of Elixir Nanoweb mediums via an R. Taylor event at Fazio’s a week or so ago, and I’d been reading that the mediums would really bring out the boom in the mahogany-based Cobalt. And given that I’d been beating the stuffings out of the strings it shipped with (D’Addario EXP16’s, I think), it seemed the timing was right.

Frankly, it went pretty well. The only complaint I had was the bridge pins. Getting them out wasn’t a big deal, but getting them back in … and evenly inserted … was pretty dang impossible. It probably means that something’s wrong, but I didn’t dare shove them in farther, for fear of wrecking the top. I’ll live with high pins on the low E and A strings until the next string change.

And yes, there’ll be a “next time”. The Cobalt has really become my go-to guitar, and I expect to wear out this set of strings too. Now, I do believe there’s another guitar or two yet to arrive in the “permanent collection” at the Deauxmayne, but the Cobalt is special, and is definitely a guitar I don’t mind traveling with.

Hmm…. maybe the there’ll be room in the Jeep for the Cobalt when they put me in the ground. Probably a good thing I bought a four door!